Contentment

My working life began in a  neighbour's drugstore where each day after school I would sweep and stock shelves for forty cents an hour.  I earned four dollars a week. In 1972 my yearly salary as a first-year teacher was seventy two hundred dollars which allowed me to save six hundred dollars towards my retirement. At the time that deduction seemed like a lot of money for a benefit that was thirty years in the future. I sat and wondered whether such an expense would be of real value when I reached those retirement years. Retirement seemed to be a distant dream where I could be free to contemplate the passing of time. Where I could sit down and take it easy.

Sitting on a bench is much more than just sitting on a bench. I've recently spent some time sitting on benches and found the experience to be quite enlightening. I've noticed the communal state that all bench-dwellers share. A presence at peace. An assurance in the knowledge that we are in the right place at the right time. "This is where I should be" is a wonderful place to be.

 Talking on a bench is good but you can just as easily not talk. Spend time in your dreams and feel the walkers drift by. Everyone has a walk. Everyone has a style, and we are an interesting bunch. Sometimes you can find little scenes unfolding here and there. Everyone has a story and benches seem to nourish our interest in the human drama. The bench is a common ground where we're free to be like everyone or be completely different. The rich sit with the poor, the happy with the sad, the strong with the weak.

The reasons we sit on public benches are as varied as snowflakes. People arrive at a bench to eat, sleep,  or drink, disregard or think. To sit and take a stone out of a shoe, or to ease a sore knee. I like to take a camera and fiddle with the movement all around me. Find picture stories.... I recently attended a Photography show at a studio in Vancouver. The display underwhelmed me but I did become involved with the photographer's general idea of storefronts as a meeting place. A bench at a storefront is my dream photography project. Set up the tripod and use a remote release to record the scene.

There are a lot of different kinds of benches in a wide variety of locations.  There are sidewalk benches, park benches, playground benches, beach benches, bus station benches, mall and gallery benches. So many choices and all the time in the world. A white iron bench in a little green space in the centre of a busy town in La Paz, Mexico, remains my favourite. That is where I found my retired self.

My retired self. The person that lived way in the future when I started my working life. The person I imagined I would be. The retired self. The guy who would spend those retirement savings.  Suddenly I had arrived.  I was here and  eager to look around. I found these retired men on a bench in Lagos, Portugal. They are benchers who attend the bench ritual most sunny days. They congregate  to display contented retirement. They represent an example of an accomplished life to the young workers and students . A bench is the meeting place of human endeavour. Dreamers meet folks just living the dreams. We're all here.

The young boy stocking shelves fifty-five years ago had no concept of retirement. The fullness of life and the dreams fulfilled clarify my contentment. I sit on a bench and smile.